If you use Ubuntu, make sure to uninstall brltty (apt-get remove brltty --purge) before you hook up the dongle; otherwise it will hijack the dongle and you won't be able to talk to it. Brltty is a software braille terminal.

Images are downloaded via USB. Access is not particularly fast: putting a 512KBybe image into the dongle takes about 17 seconds on my machine. That adds up when you want to store a 4MB image!

Images are downloaded via USB. Access is not particularly fast: putting a 512KBybe image into the dongle takes about 17 seconds on my machine. That adds up when you want to store a 4MB image!

Revision as of 14:56, 24 February 2008

Contents

About this page

About the dongle

The dongle is for sale by Artecgroup, based in Estonia. It costs about EUR 150 (2007-12).

The dongle connects to a computer via USB. It connects to the target via an LPC header.

The dongle comes with free software and full schematics. The host-based software is written in Python, and works just fine under GNU/Linux. You may want to write artecgroup to get the latest version of the software; as of 2008-02 their website does not have the latest version for download.

The dongle also has two 16-segment LED displays that can show POST codes.

Using the dongle

Reading from and writing to the dongle

If you use Ubuntu, make sure to uninstall brltty (apt-get remove brltty --purge) before you hook up the dongle; otherwise it will hijack the dongle and you won't be able to talk to it. Brltty is a software braille terminal.

Images are downloaded via USB. Access is not particularly fast: putting a 512KBybe image into the dongle takes about 17 seconds on my machine. That adds up when you want to store a 4MB image!

Here's a command that writes a 512KByte image into the dongle

./dongle.py -v -c /dev/ttyUSB0 alix0-1.bin 3584K

The -v parameter makes the command verbose. -c /dev/ttyUSB0 means 'use device /dev/ttyS0'. Alix0-1.bin is the image that is to be written to the dongle (it's a 512KByte file), and 3584K is the offset at which it should be written. Always calculate that number as 4Mbyte - size of your image.

And here's how you can read the image back:

./dongle.py -c /dev/ttyUSB0 -r 3670016 512K test2.rom

The -r parameter indicates 'read', and 3670016 is the offset at which the program should start reading (this is 3584K), for 512K bytes. You can express the offset in decimal (like in this example, in hex with a leading 0x, or in abbreviated decimal - for instance 3584K). Test2.rom is the file the image will be stored in on your computer.

If you actually wrote and read an image, you should now md5sum both files to make sure they are identical.

Booting an ALIX.1C

First of all, you'll need to make a custom cable. The ALIX.1C has a 20-pin header (J16) that can be used to hook up the dongle. The pin layout is documented on page 13 and 14 in the ALIX.1C manual:

In the above, pin 7 on the dongle should not be connected to anything on the ALIX.1C. Pin 9 on the dongle should be connected to one of 2/4/6/8/10/12/17 on the ALIX.1C, not all of those pins. Pin 15 and 18 on the ALIX.1C side need to be shorted, but not connected to anything on the dongle side.

Cable length is important - your cable should not be more than a few centimeter long.

The easiest way to make such a cable is to take an old floppy or IDE-40 flat ribbon cable (don't use IDE-80, its wires are much thinner which makes things harder), cut it, and put a 10-pin header on the dongle side.

If you are in the US, you can buy 10-pin headers here (Jameco part number 32492). You might also want to get a crimping tool (Jameco part number 73252).

This is what a finished cable looks like:

You can test your cable by booting the ALIX.1C, and then hooking it up to the dongle (using J16 on the ALIX.1C, of course). Now reboot the ALIX.1C board; the LEDs on the dongle should show post codes as the ALIX.1C shuts down and tries to boot. Unless you've prepared the dongle and stored an image into it, the ALIX.1C will not boot. But if you see POST codes on the LEDs, your cable is likely to be good. If not, use a multimeter and make sure it matches the layout above. Also make sure that it is not too long.

Now make sure the dongle is correctly configured:

Jump pin 1/2 on J1. Make sure JMP4 is set to position 1/2 (i.e. NOT to the pins marked as LPC). Make sure that you leave the mode select jumpers in the same position between the writing of the image into the dongle and trying to boot off it.

Now write your image to the top of the memory bank you want to use (see higher). Then disconnect the dongle from your computer, reconnect it, make sure that you have your cable connected to the LPC port on the dongle and J16 on the ALIX.1C, and plug in power to the ALIX.1C. Also hook up a serial port to the ALIX.1C so that you see what happens during boot. If all goes well, you will see post codes on the dongle LEDs as the ALIX.1C boots.

This work is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later version. This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.